I tried to block out thoughts of Mike Martinez while I snapped a single sterile glove on my right hand and swished my index finger in clear Muco gel.
Mrs. Valdez clenched her teeth and arched her back while I stood between her legs in stirrups. Her thin blue gown was the only shield between us. I could smell briny amniotic fluid and the sharper, metallic scent of blood.
Her husband murmured in Spanish while the nurse chanted, "One. Two. Three..."
I glanced at the beeping fetal heart monitor, which flashed one-ten, one-twenty. Normal. The heart tracing was reassuring. The single fluorescent light at the head of the bed illuminated Mrs. Valdez's cheek while our blurred shadows danced on the walls.
For once, I was grateful for the switchboard's incompetence. They hadn't tracked me or my pager down until Mrs. Valdez was hooked up to an IV and an epidural and, according to the nurse, she was already seven centimeters dilated. Theoretically, I would verify the dilation after she finished her contraction. but in all honesty, I'd probably poke around and then repeat whatever the nurse had said. I didn't know much 'bout birthin' no babies.
At last, Mrs. Valdez relaxed. The nurse took her hand off the abdomen, where she'd been palpating the uterus, and nodded at me.
I said, "Sorry about this. It will only take a minute."
Mrs. Valdez didn't even open her eyes.
I tried to be gentle as I inserted my finger up the folds of her vagina and probed the softened edges of her cervix.
Mrs. Valdez moaned. Mr. Valdez clutched her hand and glared at me.
I retreated, stripping off the glove into the garbage. "Seven. It won't be too long now." Although, for a primip (first-time mom) and a baby estimated at over eight and a half pounds, that was debatable.
I eased my way out of the room, while the husband gathered a few ice chips and handed them to my patient. She turned her head away from him.
The door swooshed closed behind me. At the nursing station, a few nurses chatted over charts and coffee while the unit clerk avoided my eye. Where did the OB residents and med students hang out? Before I could ask, my pager went off again. This time, it was a non-hospital phone number.
The unit coordinator waved me toward a call room in the back hallway. I peeked in the empty OR suite, a bathroom, and a dirty utility room complete with commodes, before I found the call room.
There were two single beds, one for a med student, one for a resident, one dirty window, and a desk with a lamp and an old copy of William's Obstetrics. The med student bed was rumpled but empty. Presumably its occupant was working or eating dinner. Sometimes, housekeeping didn't bother making the beds for us, which was pretty disturbing. I chose to sit at the desk to punch in the number.
Tucker answered. "I've got to talk to you."
"About what? Why didn't you answer my calls?"
"I found the guy we were looking for."
Tucker didn't want to say Mike's name aloud. I wondered where he was; I hadn't recognized the phone number. "I already found him. Mrs. Lee and I interviewed him."
"What are you talking about?"
"Michael Martinez, a.k.a. Mike Martin. The guy Dr. Ven thought was antisocial. Isn't that who you're talking about?"
"Yes, but how could you have talked to him? I was just with him."
"When?"
"Met up with him half an hour ago."
I checked my watch. It had taken longer than that for me to see my OB patient. "He saw us first, then. Did you pay him?"
A long, telling pause.
"Because we did." Mike Martinez was making a killing off of us, no pun intended.
Tucker cleared his throat. "Anyway. I want to talk to you about it."
"You want to bring it to the case room? My patient's about to deliver."
He burst out laughing. "God, Hope. You never stand still, do you?"
"Try not to. Are you coming?"
"See you in ten or twenty. Unless your patient's delivering then."
"She's a primip at seven centimeters. I'll see you soon." I hung up with a smile. I'd been worried about Tucker, no matter how I played it.
I passed by the case room to make sure Mrs. Valdez wasn't about to push without me. Her face glistened with sweat. The baby moved, making a muffled noise on the monitor. The nurse adjusted the external monitor, which was, as far as I could tell, a loudspeaker strapped to Mrs. Valdez's belly. I backed out again. Not yet, but soon.
I felt twitchy with energy. I walked past the other labour rooms, past the triage room, and past a woman waddling toward the elevator on her husband's arm. I bent my head over the water fountain. Lukewarm, rusty water was better than nothing. When I lifted my head, Tucker was lounging against the wall, staring at me with a McGill clipboard tucked under his arm.
I almost shrieked. My hand did fly to my chest, as if I were a Southern belle. In other words, a humiliatingly girly reaction.
Tucker laughed so hard, he thumped his free hand against the wall and laughed some more.
"Shut up." I strode past him to the call room. He followed, still chuckling. He was looking fine, in a short-sleeved blue denim shirt that showed his distal biceps and well-muscled forearms, but looks weren't everything. Personality and ability to answer phone calls counted for a lot.
He shut the door. The room felt a lot smaller and quieter than it had a few minutes ago, and I caught a whiff of dirty sheets or socks or both. He'd probably think it was me. I stood by the door and crossed my arms. "So what's your big news?"
Tucker dropped his clipboard on the desk and perched beside it, nudging aside the phone with his rear end. I closed my eyes. Now was not the time to notice his ass. "First of all, let me dazzle you with my detective work. You know what I was doing last night?"
Tori, I thought, which was pretty unworthy of me. "Dazzling detection?"
"Basically. Tori and I buttered up Dr. Ven, so he'd let us take a look at Mike's file. He wasn't that keen on it because of patient confidentiality, rah-rah-rah, but Tori convinced him we were doing a case study on borderline personalities and needed access to the records."
"Tori did that?" I'd never seen her out-and-out lie.
"Yeah." Tucker grinned. "I had no idea she was so good at laying it on. She went on about the importance of psychiatry at St. Joe's, and how we needed to improve our program here. I guess now we know how she gets her stellar evaluations. Anyway, she convinced him. He took us over to medical records at the Douglas, and let us take notes, but not photocopy anything. So I got Michael Martinez's past contact info and his next of kin. I managed to get his number through his cousin."
"Not his parents?"
Tucker shook his head, frowning a little. "It's a bad story. Anyway, I tracked Mike down and convinced him to meet me tonight. But he blew me off at the last minute. Later, he called me and said he was at Côte-des-Neiges, if I wanted to come."
"He paged you?" How come Tucker had answered that page and not mine?
He grimaced. "My pager died. I wasn't carrying it because I'm not on call. I bought a temporary cell to use with Mike and I got so caught up, I didn't check my home messages until I was on my way over here. Sorry."
"It's okay." Not what you'd expect to hear from someone professing true love and undying devotion, but I understood getting caught up in an investigation. "Was Tori with you?"
He grinned, flashing a fine set of incisors. "Jealous?"
I shook my head a little too hard. "Curious. She didn't answer her phone, either."
His smile widened. "Nah, she's on call, and you know Tori. She doesn't answer personal calls on call."
I bypassed his knowing attitude. "Okay. So you met with Michael."
"Yeah. So did you, sounds like. You want to go first?"
I shook my head. "Shoot."
"He's got an alibi for that night. There really was an after-hours club called X-TC and he worked there. Ryan's tracking down the contacts you gave him, but it looks legit."
I waited a beat before it sank in. "My Ryan? Ryan Wu?"
"Yeah. I called your house first and he answered. Is he a permanent resident?"
It was my turn to grin. "Jealous?"
"Hell, yeah." He smacked his fist into his palm. "After I pummeled him, he agreed to be my data slave and look this stuff up."
I quirked an eyebrow. "Good job."
"Okay, fine, he was already on it. After he took care of Mrs. Lee."
"Great." That was awfully quick care of Mrs. Lee, but maybe she'd insisted on a ride straight home. That sounded like her. I felt a surge of affection for Ryan, king of the computer. I kicked off my sandals and sat on the clean bed, cross-legged. I glanced around the room to make sure no one could overhear, and lowered my voice for good measure. "So have you figured out who killed Laura?" I waited for him to say, No, who, you wise woman?
He nodded. "I think Mike might have hired someone."
Mike? Qué? "How'd you figure that?"
Tucker ticked the points off on his finger. "He stole the car. Sounds like he admitted that to you and Mrs. Lee, from what Ryan understood. But he was smart enough to get himself an alibi while someone else mowed her down."
"Why would he do that?"
"This is the part I didn't tell you: he was sexually harassing Laura, and she was threatening to go to the police."